Path of Exile - Interesting Solutions to D3's Problems

One look at the official website for Path of Exile and you can tell the developers at Grinding Gear Games have a beef with Diablo III, and, to some extent, Torchlight. They never say it outright, of course, but the site's marketing copy is filled with statements like, "The game is completely free and will never be 'pay to win,'" and, "We're sick of the recent trend towards bright, cartoony RPGs."
In interviews, Grinding Gear co-founder Jonathan Rogers has been much more specific about the studio's feelings toward Blizzard's game. "Diablo III was obviously going for a huge number of sales and they really succeeded in doing that, but we really wanted to stress character customization and sort of interesting builds and that kind of stuff," the lead programmer told VG247 last month, continuing, "Diablo III didnít really deliver that for me, personally. I personally prefer our game, obviously. "
You'll find this attitude reflected in Path of Exile's design at almost every turn. Name something Diablo III players complained about and you're likely to find it addressed here in some respect.
By eliminating currency altogether, for example, Path of Exile doesn't struggle with gold farmers the way most online RPGs do. In place of a traditional economy, the developers have opted for a pure barter system; players trade gear for other gear, determining for themselves what their loot is worth, while NPCs exchange unwanted equipment for useful stuff like town portals and orbs that randomly adjust the stats on magic items.

I love the skill map system in Path of Exiles, but the limited inventory and crafting system based on collecting lots of cumbersome items was a pain (at least a year ago when I played it). I sort of wonder whether it's even feasible to take a single character ARPG based on Diablo and make it into an interesting long term experience. If you want to invent a game with the depth of chess you don't start off by modding Tic-Tac-Toe.

I was actually thinking about checking this game out one of these days (even though I'm not normally into these kinds of games) but now I won't. I hate barter systems in games and having the entire economy based on it kills the game for me.

I've played the game extensively, and it does an awful lot of things extremely well, especially for a first effort of a group of unknown developers in an out of the way place like New Zealand which AFAIK has no game industry history to speak of. These guys really remind of a young Blizzard, when they just knew what to do and how to make a good game. Such companies are extremely rare.

However, claims such as that there is no farming because there is no gold are ridiculous. Farming is alive and well in the game, you simply farm for the currency that exists (the more valuable "orbs"), and/or for desirable unique and rare items that you can trade for such currency. In fact, it is essentially impossible to progress into the highest levels without a significant effort to farm XPs, currency, and items.

I'm also somebody that does not appreciate the barter economy. I like auction houses. I don't enjoy the idea of sitting around town for hours spamming and checking the constant stream of WTS / WTB in the trade chat channel instead of playing. And I don't like haggling over everything. I got my fill of that back in the days of early online RPGs like Asheron's Call and Everquest. Nowadays technology exists for more efficient solutions. The game needs at least some sort of Asian-style personal vendor option where one can quickly buy & sell at specific prices. I realize they'll never add an AH given that was one huge failure of D3 in many people's eyes.

One of the problems with single character games that rely on aspirational gear grind to keep people playing is that all the various mechanics for gear aquisition tend to step on each other's toes: There is only so much gear that you can put in ten odd slots. When you add crafting and AH you have to nerf the drops so that any particular individual only very rarely aquires anything interesting. Then crafting has to be so hard and full of RNG that it becomes extremely frustrating too.

I don't see that these problems have a solution (outside of WoW raiding grind perhaps), whilst the only interesting things in a game are those that add to a players combat abilities. That's particularly the case in games such as ARPGs where combat is very simplistic.